There are many types of articles that include a strap to be worn about a part of the body which may be generically termed lanyards and may include loop like elements worn about the neck or the wrist and even belts worn about the waist. In many cases, these lanyards are fitted with some sort of mounting element such as hooks so that another article such as an identification card, whistle, stop watch or the like may be attached to the strap.
In a common lanyard design, two ends of a strap are brought together to form a loop. The mounting element is attached to the two ends of the strap at the point where the two ends meet. Typically, the ends of the lanyard are brought together in a recess contained within the lanyard mounting element.
It is important that such lanyards be designed so that the two ends of the strap can be securely fastened to the mounting element in order to sustain the functional structure of the lanyard under the stress of the weight of the object suspended therefrom as well as the tugging force, albeit relatively light, that may be applied to the lanyard strap when the lanyard is supporting an article that is intended to be gripped, such as a whistle or a stop watch. It is also important for economic reasons that such a bonding structure for a mounting element of a lanyard be easily constructed of inexpensive materials.
In previous designs, it has been necessary to provide means such as a clamping element or ferrule for securing the lanyard strap ends to the mounting element. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,861,813 issued Jan. 21, 1975 to S. M. Seron, discloses a lanyard having a retainer from which an object can be suspended that is securely attached to the lanyard strap ends by means of a ferrule. While the lanyard disclosed in that patent is well-designed, the presence of this component adds some expense to the manufacturing cost of the lanyard simply in terms of cost of the part. There also tends to be added manufacturing costs in terms of increased labor that is required to assemble the ferrule to the mounting element and to the strap over the labor costs that would be present if such a ferrule was not required.
Thus while lanyards of the type mentioned worked extremely well for their intended purpose and have been quite successful over the years, it is desirable to reduce the cost of manufacture thereof. The present invention, therefore, is intended to provide an economical and easy method of securely attaching the lanyard ends to the mounting element.
That is, the present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems and specifically directed to reducing the manufacturing costs of a lanyard of the type identified previously.